Huawei to make India the battleground in its war against Samsung, Apple

Huawei is in the process of restructuring its mobile business in India aimed at greater focus and speedier decision making as China’s largest smartphone player hopes to use growth in the country for its larger objective of toppling Samsung and Apple to become No. 1 globally.

The Shenzen-headquartered company wants to multiply its offline presence and is considering applying for single-brand retail licence, the process for which has been incentivised after the government on Monday relaxed mandatory local sourcing norms for three years, people familiar with the matter told ET.

"Operationally, headquarters will directly oversee India’s consumer business, the restructuring is being undertaken," a senior executive aware of the developments at the company said. The devices business is currently under the consumer division, reporting into the India CEO and then the global consumer business group.

The idea is to remove interim layers to speed up the decision process to compete better in an intensely competitive market where a handset has a maximum lead time of two to three months before getting upstaged by a competitor.

"India will be a priority market for Huawei globally, so there will be hiring on ground across the country," the person said.

The change in structure has been triggered by the company’s aim to become the largest globally within the next four to five years. Huawei is the world’s third largest smartphone maker after Samsung and Apple. In its home market of China, Huawei leads in the smartphone space followed by Xiaomi, Apple, Vivo, Oppo and Samsung.

However, smartphone shipments were down 2 per cent annually and 13 per cent sequentially, indicating a slow down, which is also seen globally and in some developed markets.

India, on the other hand, is reporting double-digit growth figures over last year, and still stands as the fastest growing smartphone market in the world. It is this growth that Huawei wants to tap into in order to achieve its five-year global goal.

Sources aware of developments in India said Huawei will give a big push to its flagship Honor series of phones here. The company will expand at state-level across India and is tying up with local distributors to increase the availability of its devices in the offline space.

Huawei will also hire sales, marketing, services and delivery workforce across all states to ensure that its offline sales run smoothly.

Huawei declined to comment on the restructuring moves.

Offline or traditional retail, that includes brick-and-mortar stores, is still the dominant mode of purchase by Indian consumers. The company is also mulling setting up its own branded stores, which will add to its offline foray.

"We're mulling on it internally, but we have not taken a call yet." Huawei India director sales (devices business) P Sanjeev said.

Much like its other Chinese counterparts, the company is also thinking of starting local production of smartphones, aimed at deepening its footprint in India.